Monty Python's Spamalot Tickets :19 recommendations
Sub-sections
Classic Monty Python comedy with hilarious songs old and new
About Spamalot
Loosely based on the 1975 Monty Python feature film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Spamalot is an irreverent and naughty take on the legends of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table.
With book and lyrics written by original Python member Eric Idle and music by John Du Prez, responsible for the soundtracks to Monty Python’s The Meaning Of Life and John Cleese’s 1988 hit film A Fish Called Wanda, Spamalot really is far from a rip off.
Having opened in Chicago in January 2005, Spamalot found a Broadway transfer only a month later with all its previews selling out. The success in New York was mirrored when Spamalot transferred to the West End in 2006, with Broadway’s original King Arthur, Tim Curry, reprising the role for a London audience.
After enormous advance ticket sales, the show’s planned run was extended by four weeks a whole four months before performances had even begun. However, despite having won three of its Tony award nominations in New York, Spamalot failed to take home any of its Olivier nominations in London. Despite leading the race with seven nominations, the 2007 Olivier awards marked what had been a sensational year for dramatic theatre with many surprise results.
Despite its lack of awards, the appeal of Spamalot is proving to endure, with the Broadway production now in its fourth year and with productions having opened in Las Vegas and Melbourne and a Spanish version planned for Barcelona in September 2008. Eric Idle has also announced that he is currently attempting to adapt Spamalot for the screen.
Book Spamalot
Reviews
Truly, a Knight to Remember
I suppose there are a few people who won’t enjoy Spamalot. The chronically depressed, the criminally insane and the snootier drama critics may find it hard to raise a smile. The loss is all theirs, however, and I suspect everyone else will have an absolute ball. There has never been a sillier musical than this, or one more calculated to appeal to the British sense of humour. Already a hit on Broadway there is a genuine sense that the show has come home with its arrival at the Palace.
Spamalot
I have to confess to being something of a Monty Python agnostic, having never found their brand of bloke-ish, deliberately daft but somewhat smugly knowing Oxbridge humour hugely to my taste. Luckily, Eric Idle and John Du Prez’s much-lauded musical is more than simply a fan-pleasing reheated mega-mix of best bits…
Spamalot
Nichols' production mixes the rowdy and the sophisticated. When King Arthur announces that the holy grail is purely a metaphor, we hear the clang of a cymbal in the pit. And the best of the sight gags shows the knights processing through various landscapes symbolised by an unfolding screen.
